1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a robot control method of controlling a robot with a hand for gripping two workpieces and a robot control apparatus for performing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Industrial robots are used for carrying out various operations such as assembly operations and welding operations. In such operations, the robots are accelerated to a predetermined speed from a stop state or are stopped by being decelerated from a predetermined speed. Japanese Patent No. 2838428, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-66001 and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 7-244520 disclose robots that operate in such a manner.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 10-083211 discloses a hand of a so-called double-hand configuration including a first gripping unit and a second gripping unit. A robot including such a hand approaches a machine tool, for example, with the first gripping unit gripping a non-machined workpiece. Then, the robot grips and removes a machined workpiece machined by the machine tool with the second gripping unit and mounts the non-machined workpiece gripped by the first gripping unit on the machine tool. Furthermore, the machined workpiece gripped by the second gripping unit is placed on a workpiece feeder, and a non-machined workpiece is gripped by the first gripping unit from the workpiece feeder.